A Kremlin advisor appeared on British state television to warn “a new stage of escalation in the Ukrainian conflict” looms and that Moscow is under pressure from its own people to punish Britain for aiding Ukraine.
Former Russian deputy foreign minister Andrei Fedorov, now billed as a Kremlin insider and frequently appearing talking head on Russian television, has told British state broadcaster the BBC that his president Vladimir Putin is under political, military, and public pressure to retaliate against the United Kingdom’s military support for Kyiv.
Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight programme, Fedorov said armaments factories in the United Kingdom are a particular target for the hoped-for Russian attacks, which he said could be quasi-military or by computer hackers, but in any case would be by actors at arms-length from Moscow with plausible deniability. Referring to London’s continuing support for Ukraine, and following the announcement on Monday that the UK would be handing over blueprints to a bunker-buster missile to Ukraine so they could produce their own, Fedorov said the country was opening as “Pandora’s box”.
Comment from London has fallen on the side that the weapons blueprints decision does not represent an escalation in the conflict because Britain and France have already been donating the same missile to Ukraine for years. But Fedorov asserted there was a “very negative reaction” in the Kremlin to the development and asserted there was growing pressure inside Russia itself on President Putin to punish Britain.
He said the UK is considered a “direct military” party to the war, and went on: “there is a very serious political and public pressure on President Putin today to undertake ‘certain measures’ against UK… it’s coming from public opinion polls, it’s coming from journalists, media, it’s coming from military. And UK, considering in the context of Ukraine, is evil number one… so many people are saying the President is waiting too long, not answering the UK, the answer — even maybe a military answer — should be made even earlier than now”.
There is a “a new stage of escalation in the Ukrainian conflict” coming, Fedorov said, and asserted that amid that Russian retaliation would become more “visible”. He said: “there are different discussions about how it should look like. It might be so-called ‘technical’ reaction, maybe some hacker attack, from unknown source — not from official, of course — there might be different political steps.
“And I cannot exclude 100 per cent that there may be some ‘semi-military’, for example… something might happen with enterprises, the factories that are producing drones for Ukraine… they could be attacked, not by Russia, but by unknown sources.”
Attacks would “of course” focus on British armaments factories producing drones and missiles for Ukraine, he said. The former Russian deputy interior minister also added that such a development brought risks, given the United Kingdom is a member of NATO and a nuclear power.
For many weapon-producing sites in the United Kingdom, coming under attack from Russian-paid proxies, who in recent years of experience have frequently been petty criminals desperate for money recruited through social media, may not be very unlike their daily existence already. Dozens of British industrial sites linked to the arms industry have been attacked, raided, smashed, and otherwise stopped from working by radical pro-Palestine activists, who assert their targets supply the Israeli Defence Force.